What are the three most important features of a crypto-exchange?

[clabits]

Working on a next-gen exchange. Need some community feedback. Please note that:

• I haven't added mandatory things here, e.g. security
• Some options are mutually exclusive, e.g. Anonymity & KYC/AML

[aussiesloth]

Asset security (Cold storage of coins), variety (Number of coins) and accessibility (Availability/up-time) are the most important to me. 

If I know the coins in the exchange wallet are secure and I have access to a wide variety of coins at any time, then I'm a happy camper.

[clabits]

Thank you for your response. Love your ICO idea and site!

Historically exchanges have invested less time and resources in security promoting the common understanding that only cold wallets are secure. I'm pretty sure that a combination of following technologies can make exchanges/wallets hack-proof:

• 2-factor authentication
• OAuth2 and OpenID Connect
• Microservices
• Transport level encryption
• The biggest one: Distributed messages between services like pub/sub (Google Pub/Sub, Microsoft Service Bus, Apache Kafka, etc.) This will make sure that the wallet cluster has no inbound port and is not DNS routable.
   It one sends signed transactions to a full node and that's all communication it can do. Then we won't need cold wallets limiting functionality. I believe cold wallet trade-off is keeping crypto-currency behind.
• OAuth2 and OpenID Connect

Let me know your take on it.

[SGToken]

Security, volume and low fees.

[An0nyMoose]

Anonymity and KYC are opposite things. How can you be anonymous if there is KYC?

I think the withdrawal fees and the user interface are import features in a crypto exchange.

[limmousine]

Security, volume and low fees.

Just like you, the first thing I look for from the exchange is security, after which I look for high trading volume. Low fees is the last thing, if both security and volume elements have been obtained.

[Grim149x]

1. Cold Storage: For extra security of coins/tokens.

2. Availability/Uptime: Big players probably need this.

3. Fiat Currencies: Important for safety of funds when people don't know or not quite sure where the market is headed.

[efey39]

crypto money in the market is constantly coming out new coins. it is very difficult to follow them. good new trading sites are needed to find the right coin.

[Yuuto]

Working on a next-gen exchange. Need some community feedback. Please note that:

• I haven't added mandatory things here, e.g. security
• Some options are mutually exclusive, e.g. Anonymity & KYC/AML

Anonymity and customer service.

Exchanges such as localbitcoins which offer anonymous transactions is extremely popular solely because of the fact that it can be used to trade person to person without any forced KYC documents. Unless you are required by law to do so, you're probably better off building a more of an anonymous exchange.

Also, customer service is extremely important as it directly influences people's perception of your service. How much they trust a service is based on other people's reviews, which comes from their experience with support.

[mpufatzis]

This is a nice post. In my opinion, an exchange should let you deposit and withdraw fiat, should have low transaction / withdraw /deposit fees and must have a good network connection in order to let you transact without problems. The last one is the most important. We all know the frustration we have when we want to sell at a specific moment and the exchange webpage doesn't respond because the network was crowded. Anonymity is not possible if you want to use fiat money. If you don't need to use fiat a decentralized exchange is probably a much better option.

[xanaxxx]

it depends on what kind of user are you. If you're day trader, I guess you need advanced tools like stop loss, leverage etc. But regular user just needs to exchange to be safe first of all, then the fees need to be decent.

[magle]

Besides all the usual stuff like cold storage etc.

I personally prefer when the exchange also shows the prices in fiat.

E.g. If the trading pair is C20/ETH. I would still like to have displayed the price is USD, just like this example from Bibox

[shinratensei_]

Working on a next-gen exchange. Need some community feedback. Please note that:

• I haven't added mandatory things here, e.g. security
• Some options are mutually exclusive, e.g. Anonymity & KYC/AML

We are looking for the future exchange site which offers anonymity. Too many exchange sites companies are working on the KYC and AML. That means if all of our data will be stored in the exchange site server itself.
Security becomes your responsibility to create future exchange sites. But the availability of the customer service becomes another important thing must need to be considered by you dude.

[cheezcarls]

Above anything else, security is always the top priority. You know why? It is because we should avoid hackers from hacking the exchanges just like what they did to Etherdelta and that Japan-based exchange. They had to do whatever it takes to make sure that all accounts are safe from getting hacked.

The other two features that I consider important are KYC/AML and availability/uptime when launching a cryptocurrency exchange. Just my two satoshis.

[clabits]

Thank you all for your responses. My team is working on an exchange, payment gateway and an ICO platform focusing on what users think is important, not what we think is important. Please have trust that your responses and time will have an impact on our product. The exchange is going to be live at http://clabits.com. Right now there's nothing there, we're expecting to launch beta in a couple of months. We'll keep you guys posted and will keep requesting feedback.

Let's shape the crypto space as a community and responsibly!